


Mail She Didn't Need

by matrixrefugee



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 19:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18505918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Kaylee gets some bad news from home; Jayne has a way to cheer her up





	Mail She Didn't Need

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Firefly, Jayne/Kaylee, bad news from home](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/1870.html?thread=65614&format=light#cmt65614)

Mail pick-up day was usually a grand time for all -- even if the purple bellies tended to get a bit nosy but thankfully not handsy about the space port Mal had selected as the site for their drop box. Usually something for everyone turned up in their mail drop: packages and letters from home, the odd newspaper, even advertising slag was welcome, since reading it helped break up the monotony of a long flight.

Jayne would not let on, but he enjoyed Kaylee's mail as much as he did his own letters and packages from Ma. She often read her letters out loud at the dinner table, or if her own people had send a box of goodies along, she would share them with the rest of the crew. But that one time, the moment she opened her box and started to read it, her usually cheery face darkened, like the sun going behind a cloud. She mumbled an excuse and went back to her cabin in a hurry like the devil was after her.

"What's up with her?" Mal asked, staring after her.

"I think that something in her letter upset her," Inara said, putting down her own perfumed letter from a sister at the Companions' training house, and going in search of Kaylee.

"Maybe she needs a big, strong man to help her feel better," Jayne said.

"I think it would be more advisable if she had a woman's touch, at least for now," Book suggested. Mal glanced at Jayne as if to preempt an off color remark, but Jayne was not about to cross wits with the Shepherd.

But later, when Inara was in her own cabin, and Jayne could hear Kaylee rummaging about in the engine room, he went looking for their ship's mechanic.

He found her quiddling with some nameless gadget Jayne had no idea did what about the ship. But he noticed her sniffling, even as she worked.

"Bad news from home? Yer dog die?" he asked.

Kaylee looked up. "No... wish it was that, though that'd be sad enough," she said. "My Nana died, sudden-like."

"Sudden-like? Was she sick?" he asked.

"No, she was the healthiest of the family: she was still choppin' wood f'r the cookstove," she replied. "She just went to bed one night an' never work up no more."

"So that letter come from home tellin' yah the news?" he asked.

"Yeah, m' Maw sent me some've her things, stuff she wanted me to have," she said.

"What kinda stuff? perfumed hankies? little knit mitts? moth balls?" he asked.

She managed a wobbly smile at the last bit. "There was some of her rose pot porry she liked to make," she said. "An' the china shepherdess she had on her shelf, an' some hankies an' things she'd 'broidered. She was handy with needle: used to make all our clo'es. She taught me how to paint things on door trim an' pretty it up."

"Like them lil' blue flo'ers yah painted 'round th' galley?" he asked. "Them's right purty, yah know."

"Yeah... it's just... it's gonna be tough to look at 'em: they make me think of her," Kaylee said, the tears starting to come again.

"Awww, come 'ere," he said, holding out one beefy arm to her. "I got big 'nuff shoulders: I got room fer you to cry on 'em."

"Thanks," she said, and snuggled herself under his arm, holding him as if for dear life.

When she had cried herself out a spell, he held her away. "Hey, when yah feel better, would yah want maybe t' paint some a' them yeller flo'rs on m' walls?" he asked.

"Maybe, if I can find the paint and the energy," she said. "I think for now I'd better look after Serenity: she's been a bit grumpy lately.

"But wouldn't them flowers look too girly on yer walls?" she asked, managing a wobbly, half joking smile.

"Girly? Nah, not at all: it'd make m' walls look less drab and boring," he said. And maybe, just maybe, once she had been to his cabin once, she might not mind coming there again for something else. He would have to think of clever ways to get her to come back, maybe loosen something or break something not important, so she would have to come back, just to fix it up...


End file.
